"The No. 1 request we get from shoppers is that they want us to put a Wild Oats store in their neighborhood," said Perry Odak, president and c.e.o. for Wild Oats Markets. "Since we don't have a store in the D.C. metro area, Peapod is the perfect way to deliver our Wild Oats products right to customers' doorsteps."

This is Wild Oats' second venture into online food retailing with Peapod. The first began in 2004 in Chicago.

Peapod serves 18 U.S. markets, including the metro areas of Chicago, Boston, suburban N.Y., and Washington, D.C., and communities in the states of Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, and Rhode Island, and has made more than 8 million deliveries since its inception in the late 1980s. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Ahold of the Netherlands.